The StartX Files: How Linux Could Lose to Microsoft

Electrocuting the Elephant

May 8, 2001

By coming out last week and declaring open season on open source, Microsoft
has unleashed an onslaught of invective from the Linux community more scorching
than the time my uncle caught me looking at his Playboys when I was eight (my ears
are still burning from that one). But this may be the wrong approach for us
to take.

A lot of people wrote me an asked me what I thought of the whole affair and
frankly I am still shaking my literary head at the nonsense. And I am
not alone. My colleagues in the so called "mainstream" press (read:
Microsoft-friendly) are also wondering what the heck is going on. Why would
Microsoft aim itself at the open source and free software concepts, rather than
the Linux operating system itself, they ask rhetorically.

They know the answer, of course: Linux is unlike any challenger Microsoft
has ever seen. No one really owns Linux, a fact that scares the bejeezus out
of the execs in Redmond. There is no one thing to emulate, nothing really in
the Linux technology they want to "embrace and extend." Nothing except
the overriding philosophies themselves: the GPL and the Open Source concepts.

And so that's where we found ourselves last Thursday, laughing like hyenas
at Microsoft's shared source concept. In talkback after talkback, we (myself
included) poked fun at the mighty software giant trying to clothe itself in
the very best free and open source software has to offer-all the while stressing
that while code would be shared, everyone had to remember that the code always
belongs to Microsoft.

After I sobered up from the hijinks, I realized that Linux itself could be
in for an interesting fight with Microsoft, despite Microsoft's apparent blundering
into this arena. I say apparent because I don't think Microsoft is making mistakes
here.

The first clue came on Thursday itself, when my wife came into my little editorial
nerve center and informed me that she just saw on CNN that Microsoft was attacking
open source. That was a midday report, made not too long after Microsoft posted
the text of Mr. Mundie's speech on their Web site. I told her that I was aware
of the story, asked how much coverage CNN gave to the tale (not much), and went
back to my work.

Say what you will about CNN, if they give a little focus to something like
this, then you know it registers on the minds of corporate executives somewhere.

The second clue came when the Free Software Foundation issued their obligatory
press release in response to Mundie's statements. Microsoft, it seems, has not
learned Universal Law No. 312: If you call automatically equate GPL'd software with
"open source," you
will get a corrective statement from the FSF or Richard Stallman. It's
like smoke and fire, can't have one without the other.

Yes, Microsoft did confuse the two concepts of GPL and open source. Care to
take a guess why? Because they know the average listener is not going to know
the difference. And like any good political campaigner, Microsoft is not going
after the truth here. They are going for perception and sometimes that's all
you need.

In the portrait Microsoft is trying to paint, open source and free software
are synonymous and they are bad news for software developers who want to succeed.
In their world, the free software model is just as bad a business model as the
dot.coms who just tanked on the stock market. Sure, the Linux community knows
these facts are in error--but far too many people may take these erroneous conclusions
as fact.

This is an old, old game in big business: emphasizing only the points you think
will make the other guy look bad and you look good. Today we call it spin control
and perception handling, but they had it even as far back as a hundred years
ago. Thomas Edison practiced a rather gruesome form of it while trying to prove
that his direct current form of electricity was far superior to competitor Nicholai
Tesla's alternating current. DC delivery would be much safer, Edison maintained,
since DC generators would not produce the incredible amount of voltage as AC
power. To prove his point, Edison would hold public demonstrations and electrocute
hundreds of animals with AC current. At one point, Edison even staged (and filmed)
the electrocution of Coney Island elephant Topsy, who has apparently killed
three men on a rampage.

Ultimately, Tesla's theories won out, because under Edison's DC power, there
would have to be neighborhood power plants built rather than simple step-down
AC transformers. Still, it was a near thing. The bitter irony of this is that
Edison's demonstrations did demonstrate how efficiently electricity could kill,
which in turn led to (in a rare moment of bipartisanship) the New York State
Legislature overwhelmingly approving a new law switching executions from hangings
to electric chair.